We calculated how much money trees save for your city

More than half the global population now lives in urban areas, comprising about 3 percent of the Earth. The ecological footprint of this growth is vast and there’s far more that can be done to improve life for urban residents around the world.

When it comes to natural spaces, trees are keystone species in the urban ecosystem, providing a number of services that benefit people. My research team has calculated just how much a tree matters for many urban areas, particularly megacities. Trees clean the air and water, reduce stormwater floods, improve building energy use and mitigate climate change, among other things.

Measuring trees

Our team, led by Dr. David Nowak of the USDA Forest Service and Scott Maco of Davey Institute, develops the tree benefits software i-Tree Tools.

These tools simulate the relationship between trees and ecosystem services they provide. These services can include food, clean air and water, climate and flood control, pollination, recreation and noise damping. We currently don’t simulate many services, so our calculations actually underestimate the value of urban trees.

Our software can simulate how a tree’s structure – such as height, canopy size and leaf area – affects the services it provides. It can estimate how trees will reduce water flooding; or explore how trees will affect air quality, building energy use and air pollution levels in their community. It can also allow users to inventory trees in their own area.

Our systematic aerial surveys of 35 megacities suggest that 20 percent of the average megacity’s urban core is covered by forest canopy. But this can vary greatly. Trees cover just 1 percent of Lima, Peru, versus 36 percent in New York City.

We wanted to determine how much trees contribute to human well-being in the places where humans are most concentrated, and nature perhaps most distant. In addition, we wanted to calculate how many additional trees could be planted in each megacity to improve the quality of life.